Will Parrish: Is Premier Pacific Vineyards Dead?

Some of the wealthiest and best-connected land speculators in the western hemisphere came together for a conference two months ago in Miami, from October 19-21, to discuss their accelerating feeding frenzy, more like a hoarding frenzy. Land speculation booms throughout much of the world, even with the torpid state of the global economy, which seems frequently on the verge of an even worse downturn. Persian Gulf states are working out land deals in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe; China is buying up large tracts throughout Africa; and 33 million hectares of the Amazon have been licensed to petroleum companies.

In 1976, economist Susan George noted that only .23 percent of landowners own more than half of all the world’s land (never mind those who own no land at all), a trend that has likely only worsened in the interceding 35 years.

“The Agriculture Investment Summit Americas is a three-day senior-level conference for US, Canadian, and Latin American investors to access global agribusiness and farmland opportunities,” the conference web site reads. The confab was designed as an opportunity not only to gain advice, but as a place to “benefit from intensive networking opportunities” with, for example, potential investors.

One of the featured speakers in this gathering of the global “.23 percent” was Richard Wollack, co-chairman of Premier Pacific Vineyards (PPV) based in Napa. He was the only Northern California resident on the program. Few people in our region understand land speculation as Wollack does.

Premier Pacific, which Wollack operates 50-50 with long-time vineyard developer William Hill, claims to own the largest vineyard portfolio in the country with acreage in Washington and Oregon, and holdings running up California’s coastal zones from Santa Barbara to a massive 30-square-mile (20,000 acre) slice of the Gualala River watershed on the Sonoma-Mendocino border — a project known euphemistically as “Preservation Ranch.” The company owns three large vineyard estates in Anderson Valley, including the parcel of the so-called “Big Dig,” a notorious large pond off Anderson Valley Way.

PPV’s largest project is the one that has given it greatest notoriety. Preservation Ranch would involve clear-cutting roughly 1,700 acres of redwood forest and ripping out the roots, installing more than 80 miles of six-foot high fencing that would fragment wildlife habitat across the majority of the parcel, building 90 miles of road. There would also be a gravel mining operation, and of course the various industrial-scale water diversions necessary to fill the project’s proposed 40 reservoirs. At various turns, Premier Pacific has touted a large subdivision as part of the project.

The Gualala River has already been battered by years of industrial logging and, more recently, intensive wine-grape cultivation. The destruction of so much redwood forest would damage the watershed further, on a massive scale.

In the past year, the Associated Press, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, North Bay Bohemian, Huffington Post, and most of all this fine publication have featured stories on Preservation Ranch. Friends of the Gualala River, the local non-profit with members primarily based in Annapolis and Gualala, has helped collect nearly 100,000 signatures on a petition opposing both Preservation Ranch and a proposal by Spanish wine giant Codorniu to convert around 170 acres of redwoods to grapes on a nearby parcel. A petition calling on Codorniu to withdraw its proposal to clear-cut in Annapolis circulates in Spain, having collected 34,000 signatures.

It seems as though the heightened public scrutiny has finally caught up with Premier Pacific, as it may soon with Codorniu. A few weeks prior to Wollack’s dispatch to the Miami confab, the company’s biggest funder indicated they may sever ties with the project. The California Public Employees Retirement System (CALPERS), which had made $200 million in investments in the company, announced they were removing Premier Pacific Vineyards from their previous position as managers of the investment fund. In other words, while the pension maintains its investment in PPV, PPV is no longer manages the investment.

Next month, CALPERS announces the new manager of the fund. Speculation abounds that said new manager will drop PPV entirely, which would spell a dismal fate for the company, being that the pension counts for at least half its investment dollars.

Lewis Purdue, editor of Wine Industry Insight, led off a recent story on the subject thusly: “The CalPERS (California Public Employees Retirement System) decision to fire Premier Pacific Vineyards (PPV) as the manager of its poorly performing vineyard real estate portfolio has left PPV’s 130+ employees — from tractor drivers to executives — energetically networking, knocking on doors and handing out resumes — all of them fearing their jobs will be gone by Jan. 1, 2012.”

Over the summer, I received personal confirmation when a prominent state-level government staff member e-mailed me to ask for an update on the project. Let’s just say this staff person seemed to be carrying out her or his investigation independent of Premier Pacific, implying that certain influential elements of California state government are not on friendliest of terms with the company. It would make sense for CALPERS to shed an investment like that in PPV, given that the pension has faced considerable scrutiny of its own for its investment practices in the last few years.

PPV has several other investors, the largest being Connecticut-based endowment adviser Commonfund Realty, which is in for $50 million. CB Richard Ellis, the global real estate firm of which Wollack is former chairman, invested $1 million when PPV was first getting going in 2002.

Dallas real estate mogul Stuart Hall plopped an undisclosed amount into PPV in 2003. His previous history doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence in his judgment, however. Hall built a $4 billion real estate empire in the 1980s. Then, in the 1990s, he declared bankruptcy as the market crashed. Hall owns several of his own vineyards, including a 230-acre site on the Silverado Trail in Napa and the other in Alexander Valley, entitled Iron Horse Vineyards. His wife, Kathryn Hall, a former US ambassador in the Clinton administration, grew up in Mendocino County, where she managed a 63-acre vineyard owned by her family, the Walts.

With so much money backing them, Premier Pacific has been able to hire some of the cream of the local crop to carry out its proposals. One of their legal advisers is Eric Koenigshofer, who was campaign manager for Sonoma County Supervisor Efren Carrillo, in whose district Preservation Ranch is located. Koenigshofer himself is a former supervisor in the district, and he also has strong connections with the Sonoma County Planning Commission, which will rule on Premier Pacific’s proposal if even makes it to a vote.

SoCo’s Permit and Resource Management Department has lately been working with PPV on producing a draft environmental impact report. This document will cost about $1.5 million and will reportedly be ready by early 2012. Both the Planning Commission and CALFIRE, the state-level so-called “lead agency” in this matter, will then vote on whether to grant PPV a permit for the project.

It seems as though things are coming to head in the fight to protect the redwood forest and the Gualala River from the wine industry’s biggest land speculator. One way of reading Richard Wollack’s high-profile appearances at global land investment conferences (he was scheduled for a similar conference in London the same month, though he had to pull out of the engagement at the last minute) is that he is making a bid for back-up investors in case CALPERS really does withdraw from the proposal next month.

We’ll continue our coverage in the AVA in the coming weeks, including a full-on biography of Wollack and Hill, the latter being one of the most ecologically destructive men in Wine Country across the past 30 years.
~~

Feeds: Mendo Island & Independent News

Sea Chantey (Oxford, 1861) There is an insect that people avoid (Whence is derived the verb “to flee”). Where have you been by it most annoyed? In lodgings by the sea. If you like your coffee with sand for dregs, A decided hint of salt in your tea, And a fishy taste in the very […]

Today, a new psychological repression hides in plain sight. It is the servant of a modern ideology, a religion really, that says the material world is soulless and merely fodder for economic growth. This repression prevents most from seeing our ecological predicament and therefore from understanding it or acting in response to it. This repression is of the v […]

Global Coal Boom Ends As China — And World — Wakes Up To Reality Of Carbon Pollution | It's not Climate Change - It's Everything Change | Hillary Clinton has a renewable energy plan, but she still needs one for fossil fuels | Study: We've wiped out half the world's wildlife since 1970 | Against Forgetting...

In an interview during the 40-hour standoff in Portland, Luke Strandquist describes what it’s like on the front line of standing up to Shell Oil.By Katherine Bagley Cloaked in early morning darkness, 13 Greenpeace volunteers climbed over the edge of the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Ore. on Wednesday and rappelled down climbing ropes so they could hover 100 […]

Hundreds of corporate giants have rallied to urge governors to see the upcoming regulations as a boost for the economy.By Katherine Bagley Three hundred sixty-five companies and investors sent letters on Friday to more than two dozen governors supporting the Environmental Protection Agency's plans to significantly reduce carbon emissions from power plan […]

(Houston Chronicle)Shell launched Arctic drilling on Thursday by sending a specialized bit spinning into the bottom of the Chukchi Sea, as critics protested against the campaign. The company now has until Sept. 28 to drill the top portions of up to two wells at its Burger prospect about 70 miles northwest of the Alaska coastline, but after fixing a damaged i […]

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is proposing an interstate compact to defy federal law and "shield" states from the EPA's imminent Clean Power Plan.By Naveena Sadasivam With the Obama administration poised to issue its sweeping rules to cut carbon pollution from power plants, a Texas-based conservative think tank is making a far-fetched bid […]

According to this permanently-smiling Christian, the Large Hadron Collider is a horrible idea because God did away with the Tower of Babel.So, you know, logic.The video gets really "interesting" around the 5:05 mark.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker, who thinks atheists are missing out because we don’t have cool hats like other religious people, says there are some Protestants who believe in a childish version of faith… [According to atheists, religious people] are also supposed to believe in a God who answers prayers here below and gives us goodies if [Read More...]

This is a neat project.Matt Cubberly wrote a book introducing children to evolution via poetry and neat illustrations by May Villani. It's called Evolutionary Tales and they're raising funds for it on Kickstarter:

Small is beautiful, when small is skilled and dedicated. ~Gene Logsdon

Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right. ~H L Mencken

I've observed that people tend to live at one of two extremes in the spectrum of life: those who live on the edge, and those who avoid the edge. Those who live on the edge are hanging out in the most dangerous and unstable places — yet they're also often the most powerful agents of change, because the edge is where change is happening; away from the edge, things are naturally unchanging. ~Thom Hartmann

Come on. You just can’t come up with anything more ridiculous than someone who honestly thinks that all human woes stem from an incident in which a talking snake accosted a naked woman in a primeval garden and talked her into eating a piece of fruit. ~Keith Parsons

Life is not a problem to be solved, nor a question to be answered. Life is a mystery to be experienced. ~Alan Watts

What is not worth doing, is not worth doing well. ~Abraham Maslow

Society is like a stew: If you don't stir it up every now and then, the scum rises to the top.~Edward Abbey

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. ~Buckminster Fuller

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one. ~ Richard Dawkins

I’m not saying there isn’t a god, but there isn’t a god who cares about people. And who wants a god who doesn’t give a shit? ~Robert Munsch

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death
while praying for a fish. ~ Anon

When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. ~ Stephen Roberts

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. ~ Joseph Campbell

I sang as one / Who on a tilting deck sings / To keep men's courage up, though the wave hangs / That shall cut off their sun. ~C. Day Lewis

Transition Tools (Basic)

Stoics/Freethought

Zeno Stoics

Local Organic Family Farms

THE SMALL ORGANIC FARM greatly discomforts the corporate/ industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet. Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power.

Thomas Jefferson said he didn’t think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it.

It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can’t be bullied because they can feed their own faces. ~Eliot Coleman

What is a fact beyond all doubt is that we share an ancestor with every other species of animal and plant on the planet. We know this because some genes are recognizably the same genes in all living creatures, including animals, plants and bacteria. And, above all, the genetic code itself — the dictionary by which all genes are translated — is the same across all living creatures that have ever been looked at. We are all cousins. Your family tree includes not just obvious cousins like chimpanzees and monkeys but also mice, buffaloes, iguanas, wallabies, snails, dandelions, golden eagles, mushrooms, whales, wombats and bacteria. All are our cousins. Every last one of them. Isn't that a far more wonderful thought than any myth? And the most wonderful thing of all is that we know for certain it is literally true...

The whole world is made of incredibly tiny things, much too small to be visible to the naked eye — and yet none of the myths or so-called holy books that some people, even now, think were given to us by an all-knowing god, mentions them at all! In fact, when you look at those myths and stories, you can see that they don't contain any of the knowledge that science has patiently worked out. They don't tell us how big or how old the universe is; they don't tell us how to treat cancer; they don't explain gravity or the internal combustion engine; they don't tell us about germs, or anesthetics. In fact, unsurprisingly, the stories in holy books don't contain any more information about the world than was known to the primitive peoples who first started telling them! If these 'holy books' really were written, or dictated, or inspired, by all-knowing gods, don't you think it's odd that those gods said nothing about any of these important and useful things? -Richard Dawkins

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. ~ Cicero